By ALISON McCULLOCH

What becomes of a nation
when it attains its long-harbored goal of surpassing the world's
longtime economic leader?

Recent history offers two
imperfect but instructive examples. In the early 20th century,
Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany interpreted its sprint past Britain as
license to reshape the world in its image—by force.

Several decades later Japan
began conquering the world with its goods, briefly surpassing the
U.S., at le

An audacious view of a counterfeit
paradise

reviewed by charles foran

From Saturday's Globe and Mail,
Toronto

Published Friday, Jan. 27, 2012 4:00PM EST

The great essayist and story-writer Lu Xun spoke of his
nation’s tendency to feel collective nostalgia for a “lost good
hell.” The impulse among Chinese, Lu remarked, was to forever gaze
backward, no matter how awful the past, for fear of having to
confront a present that is a hell of its own active
variety.